on the positioning of the ram slots, many many cases these days (at least non budget basement ones) have top mounted exhaust fans that are generally larger than the fans at the rear anyway. So why not make the flow go the way heat tends to want to?

That is.. up.
Forcing against airflow is bad.. sure
But having a front air feed to top exhaust isn't exactly a bad thing..
Indeed many cases have the ability to feed air from the bottom. Making a straight airflow which makes more sense than a front to back?

Perhaps there is an article in this somewhere? best airflow / heat-sink orientation? :P
i know this can be highly variable from case to case and hardware to hardware but a cross section of common cases from the more budget friendly to the more expensive, test with sli etc and see which provides best cooling on gpu, cpu and hdd's ?
airflow from front - back.. bottom - top.. front - top.. bottom - back and any other combination you can think of ( Like mine which is front/bottom/side - back/top)
if volume of air more important than flow? is fresh (cooler) air feeding the coolers more important than dumping the hot air?

And possibly a neat cable - messy cable - rats nest comparison too :P
Just to see how important tidiness is would be interesting